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The four officers were found to be defending themselves when they fired 41 shots at the West African immigrant, striking him 19 times, two police sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press.
The four officers -- Kenneth Boss, Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy -- encountered Diallo in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment building on Feb. 4, 1999, while searching for a rape suspect. They opened fire when they saw what they thought was a gun; it turned out to be his wallet. All four were acquitted of criminal charges last year. New York Times, Thursday, April 26, 2001
Sometimes a story hardly needs comment. The seeds of it's own outrageous absurdity are already planted, in all their imminent glory, in the very words that tell the tale. In this case-- "41 shots". The only thing left to comment on is the bizarre distortion applied to an issue like the Diallo case because the bar of absurdity has been raised so high. Those who defend the police argue that because Diallo was reaching for his wallet-- which some reasonable people might regard as a rather foolish thing to do with a number of New York's finest closing in aggressively-- the police are justified in applying lethal force. The argument appears to be that the police, given their dangerous occupation, can't afford to wait to see if it really is a wallet. Thus if they win the point that the officers thought it might have been a gun, which is the only point they have a chance of winning, they would seem to prevail and the officers would get off scott free.
But the real issue is the 41 shots. There were four officers. If they had each fired once or twice, you could argue that they were jittery and too quick and maybe even incompetent. If that had been the case, they should simply have been fired. In a dream world, good heavens, they might even have been charged with criminal negligence. But the fact that each officer fired and fired and continued to fire can only be explained by one thing, and that is that they wanted to make sure that nobody was going to survive to go to court and testify that four big, mighty, manly New York police officers went ballistic and fired their guns at him for no good reason at all.
In reality, even if Diallo had been reaching for a gun, the officers, by any reasonable standard, should still have been charged with murder, because there were four of them, and because they obviously had no intention of arresting or disabling or wounding Diallo: they fully intended to kill him.
As it turns out, they may have correctly surmised that a dead Diallo would be easier to deal with than a living witness to their actions, since Diallo, of course, is not available to deny that he even reached for his wallet.
2
Randall said she did not know about any of that. "It was just my simple understanding that I thought you were allowed to write parodies in America," she said, "I have read parodies, and I wanted to write one." NY Times, April 26, 2001
Alice Randall, a black country and western song-writer, has written a novel called "The Wind Done Gone" which sounds like it might be a wonderful parody of "Gone With the Wind". But the soul-less Scarlet police who guard the "legacy" (ha ha ha) of Margaret Mitchell's ridiculous novel have taken Randall to court to prevent her novel from being published by Houghton-Mifflin (preview copies now fetch $250 each on eBay). They have argued that the novel is an infringement of copyright because she uses characters and settings from the original Mitchell novel.
Well, duh.
Exactly how would you do a parody without referencing the subject of the parody?
A Federal District Court in Atlanta decided that Randall would just have to do her parody without the subject. It ruled that Houghton-Mifflin could not publish and sell her book. The ruling is being appealed.
And it should be. It's a dumb ruling.
3
The networks argue that there have been fewer and fewer local programs and that viewers much prefer to watch what the networks have to offer anyway. The networks, also noting the continued loss of their audience to cable TV, say they need to accrue more control to be able to afford the high-quality shows the viewing public expects of them. NY Times, April 23, 2001
I love that last line: "The high-quality shows"... like the Bette Midler Show? Two Guys and Girl? The Geena Davis Show? Donny and Marie? "Veronica's Closet"? Mr. Ed? "Family Law"? "Survivor"? "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire"? Reminds me of Eli Lilly's claims that women and physicians simply demanded that they repackage Prozac as pastel-coloured "Sarafem", as a treatment for a mythical disorder called PMDD (PreMenstrual Dyphoric Dysfunction).
What people want? Or what insiders demand? What friends and cronies can arrange? "What About Raymond" is produced by a company owned by David Letterman. "Veronica's Closet" is owned by the makers of "Friends". Disney, which owns ABC, also owns Touchstone Television, which produced "Once and Again". All of these shows might well have been cancelled had it not been for the connections to the right people. What about all the children's shows with tie-ins to toy manufacturers and fast-food outlets and record companies? What about idiotic "reality" shows that are simply extremely cheap to produce?
It's one thing to be a greedy corporation. It's one thing to be greedy and dishonest. But when corporations try to tell us that we really want the tackiest, most exploitive, and stupid products-- nay, that we demand these idiocies... It reminds me of when I complained to the post office about the crap they stick in my mail box every day. They actually tried, with a straight face, to tell me that most people actually want the information in those fliers.
My response is always this: if you really believe that, would you agree to abide by the results of a poll of what people really want?
The question is, should people have a choice about the crap that gets stuffed into their mailboxes, or on their tv screen, or their computer desktops?
